


I Needed to Know

by ColiOli



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, POV First Person, dealing with things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 11:01:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12505924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColiOli/pseuds/ColiOli
Summary: He stops to look at me –his hair a mess and in the early sunrise light he looked more human than I’d ever seen him before.





	I Needed to Know

**Author's Note:**

> So I did this thing. To be fair I'm not sure what this is, but I felt like writing it and this just kinda poured out.

 

There was something in his eyes that night when I asked him the question. It fumbled from my tongue and across my lips before I could subdue my near constant dying need to know. And I realized then that maybe I really didn’t want to know, because his features suddenly harden as if the thought of ‘what we were’ suddenly brought him back to earth.

He pulls away from the warmth of where our bodies were pressed between sheets and sits upright on the edge of the bed with his back to me.

“Daryl.”

“I already told ya from the beginnin’. This ain’ nothin like that.”

But the ‘beginning’ was some time ago. And within that time the closeness of our bodies never changed, but the depth of our feelings had. There’d be that look he’d give me from across the court yard as soon I returned from a task. He’d always nod to me, and within hours of returning he’d seek me out without even mentioning his day –just to ask if things were fine.

The beginning had been so different from today.

And so I let the hurt sink in. I feel it somewhere in my gut, and the ball of it’s discomfort rolls its way up into my throat where it presses against my esophagus. I swallow it whole while running a hand through my hair and letting my arm drop on the bed.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

“What?” He turns around and looks down at me with dark eyes.

“Sneaking around. This. I thought it was something different.”

“It ain’ ever changed from what you agreed it to be.”

I frown. I had agreed, but that was before the countless nights he’d settled in my trailer. Or the time we waited for Rick’s signal –the two of us alone that night sitting on top of the car under a new moon when the all light was absent except for the stars that glittered the sky. I remember that night because he knew how tired I was and offered to let me rest my head on his shoulder and keep watch for the two of us. Always the little things—the subtle cues I received that made me think this was turning into something more.

“You’re right. I had agreed to it then. But I want something more from you, and they don’t even have to know! But I can’t do this part anymore—where I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not the one for you or if it’s because you don’t want them to know.”

“It ain’ about them.”

“Then it’s me?”

“Nah, it’s jus’,” he rubs a frustrated hand over his features then abruptly stands up. He grabs onto his discarded clothes and begins to force them back on.

“Daryl.”

“I gotta get back,” he says under his breath as he shoves his boots on.

“So that’s it then? It’s just done?”

He stops before the door and lets his head hang before muttering under his breath, “Things just ain’ meant to be the way you want them to be.” By the time he pulls the door open and shuts it behind him, I’m already half across the trailer harshly pulling on my boxers.

Screw them –if the night guards see me running across the court yard chasing after the man who abruptly left my trailer. They’d seen more shocking things these days and I doubt this would hardly give them anything to talk about.

I catch up to Daryl and pull back against his sleeveless arm. “What do you mean by ‘things aren’t meant to be how I want them’?” He stops to look down at me—how I’m bare chested and without pants or shoes on. How absurd I appear yet I still came after him without a second thought. And the near dawn air clips at my skin but I resist letting the coldness of the wind cross my mind. “You have no idea how much I want you to be a part of my life. And I’m sorry if you don’t like the fact that I let this get out of control but I don’t want you to go without you knowing how much I care. I really care for you Daryl.”

He refuses to meet me in the eye, instead cautiously darting his gaze from my ridiculous outburst to where the guards stand on the posts of the wall.

“Forget them Daryl. Just tell me why and I swear I’ll never bring this up again. I have that right to know don’t I?”

He sighs and lets his gaze drop to the ground. “It ain’ you Paul.”

“It’s what they think, isn’t it?”

He shrugs. “Ain’ jus’ that.” He pauses, and I can tell he’s struggling to find the words, but I want him to figure out what they are instead of shutting down like he tends to make a habit of. “Have a history of losing people close to me.”

It’s then that I comprehend he really has cared all along –validating him finding me when he hadn’t heard from me in days just to know that things were good, I was good. Or the irritation I’d see flash across his face when he knew I was going off alone to scout. But he’d never say anything against it to my face yet I’d been good at reading him for some time now.

“So what then? You just want to keep doing what we’re doing so you can always hold me at a distance in case I get killed? Will that really make it easier for you when I’m gone?”

“You know it won’t.”

“Then what?”

He stops to look at me –his hair a mess and in the early sunrise light he looked more human than I’d ever seen him before.

“I guess I’m asking you to trust me”, he said.

We both stand there in silence. My hair whips around my features as another breeze runs across my naked body.

“What is this Daryl?”

“S’ somethin’, jus I ain’ ready to call it that. Jus’ need some more time.”

I nod. It was more than I’d expected when he left me in my trailer. And I knew that this was hard for him—being close to people and simultaneously letting them in. I knew that from the beginning and it would be unfair of me to suddenly expect anything different from the man.

“Okay. I’m willing to be patient, but all I ask is that you tell me what you’re thinking. I can’t be guessing all the time. My mind doesn’t work like that.”

“Thought you was named Jesus?”

I smirk. “And I thought you refused to call me that.”

He finds my eyes and holds them there. “Yer somethin’ else that’s for sure.”


End file.
